Tim McCabe has been through it all. McCabe joined Delphi Automotive in 2006 and became CIO in 2009, and in the years he's led technology the auto parts maker stumbled financially, plunged into bankruptcy, reorganized and streamlined, got back on a growth track and re-emerged as a public company. McCabe and his team undertook drastic cost- cutting to help stanch losses, then shifted gears to enable global expansion and are now driving the 'Safe, Green and Connected' initiative that is fueling Delphi's success.

In this installment of the IDG Enterprise CIO Interview Series, McCabe talked with Chief Content Officer John Gallant about how he navigated that tortuous track and how IT has become -- no pun intended -- a driver of revenue. McCabe explains that bankruptcy forced IT to take a cold, hard look at how it was really adding value, but he says other IT leaders can -- and should -- put themselves under a similar microscope even if their companies are financially healthy. McCabe also explored what it means for CIOs to be "contextually" knowledgeable about their businesses and -- having overseen major outsourcing initiatives at both GM and Delphi -- he talked about the future of offshoring and out-tasking.

The company has been through an awful lot in the past decade. Tell me how your team has helped Delphi make that turnaround. How are you driving key initiatives?

A: I think we've got to talk about this contextually in time frames, because the team now is different from the team from, say, 2006 and 2007. The makeup is different. The capabilities that we're required to have are different. So let's step back in time for a minute and then we'll kind of get ourselves up to 2013, and looking beyond.